


That Same Smile

by Deannie



Series: Women on the Border [4]
Category: Now and Again
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:33:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7575883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lisa tries to come to terms with things as the Wisemans flee New York.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Same Smile

**Author's Note:**

> For the hc_bingo prompt—Secret Identity Revealed. Part of my Women on the Border series.
> 
> Thanks to Fara, as usual!

The funny thing was, she knew. Literally, from that first moment when she saw him sitting on the street, singing one of  _ their _ songs (his singing voice wasn’t as good now as it was… then, she guessed she should say), on some completely subconscious level she'd known he was... him. She gave bums on the street a dollar every now and again, but he’d been different. She’d certainly never taken a bum shopping, no matter how attractive he was.

And he  _ was _ attractive. But he’d been beautiful to her when he was  _ him _ , too. Most people saw an overweight insurance salesman, but to Lisa, he was Michael.  _ Her _ Michael.

“This is  _ amazing _ !” Heather was saying—for the four hundredth time since Mr. New—since  _ Michael _ burst into the house, ran them both out the back, broke a hole in the fence, and hotwired Harold Winter’s sports car. “You’re like Superman or something now, aren’t you?”

“Something like that,” Michael replied, with that same quiet patience he’d always had with her. “Listen, honey, we’re going to be driving for a while. You might want to take a nap—we’re going to have to move fast when we get to where we’re going.”

“Yeah, right. Like I'm gonna sleep,” Heather retorted, causing Lisa to smile despite herself. Michael did the same, which quashed her good mood very effectively. “I want to know everything! I mean, what’s it like? I mean, you’re  _ you _ , but you’re—”

“Heather,” Michael said sternly. His Dad Voice, as their daughter liked to call it. “I promise I’ll tell you everything. Later.”

“You better,” Heather replied dubiously. But she sat back in the third stolen car of the day, and it wasn’t more than twenty minutes later that she was asleep.

“Thought she’d never drift off,” he murmured, that doting smile back on his face. “Remember when she was five? She’d stay awake in her room and talk to herself until midnight?”

Lisa did. She also remembered when Heather was fifteen and cried herself to sleep for twenty-seven nights in a row, waiting for her daddy to come home. Unconsciously, she turned to tell that to the man beside her—the man who had both annoyed her and intrigued her every moment of every encounter they’d had in the last ten months—and froze, as her husband’s smile caught her by surprise.

Her husband.

God, Michael was  _ alive! _

She smacked him hard enough to cause him to swerve slightly as they barrelled up Highway 17, heading north away from the city, away from Dr. Morris, away from the men he insisted had been sent to kill them. She suspected Michael was headed for Canada, but God only knew how they’d get over the border.

“Ow!” he barked, his inflections so familiar, even though the voice wasn’t. “What was that for?”

“You’re alive!” she sniped back, knowing it sounded stupid, but not able to keep from saying it. 

“Yeah.” And because he was Michael, he knew exactly what she meant. He always had. It was what had made her fall in love with him in the first place. “Lisee, I couldn’t tell you. I… They would have killed you months ago,” he explained again, a pleading in his tone. “Heather, too, and I couldn’t—”

“I know,” she whispered. “I know.” The world sped by around them, and she wondered how far behind them the doctor and his goons were. “It’s just…. You  _ died, _ Michael. You died, and you left us alone, and now you’re this…. superman—this really  _ hot _ superman, and…. This is all just very difficult to come to grips with, okay?” 

“I know,” he said reaching out to her a second to grip her hand in understanding. He put both hands back on the wheel. “You think I’m really hot?” he asked, that teasing in his voice.

She grinned and blushed despite herself. Damn him anyway. Lisa sighed, knowing there were bigger problems than her dealing with his reincarnation. “What do we do now?”

“We get somewhere where we can switch cars without being noticed—there are a lot of small towns up here, and I’m sure one of them has a used car lot we can get into.”

“I mean in a larger sense, Michael,” she growled, this time irritated with him the way she’d been irritated with him on and off their entire adult lives. “Where are we going to go? Where  _ can _ we go?”

He fell silent for a long moment, then pulled off the road, into a copse of trees where they probably couldn’t be seen from the road. He switched off the headlights and they were left with nothing but the dashboard to see each other by.

“Hell, I don’t know, Lisee,” he whispered. “I just know that I had one chance to get us all out. He was going to kill you  _ and _ Heather, and then he was going to wipe my memory, which is as good as dead. He’d get away with it, because the only person who would know who murdered you wouldn’t even  _ remember _ you.”

“Why didn’t he wipe your memory before?” she asked, to forestall the panic attack that his statement was threatening to bring on. “I mean, wouldn’t that be easier?”

Michael thought about his answer. “I don’t think he wanted to. It wouldn’t… mesh with his experiments.” She could tell he was hiding something, and she had an idea of what. When he and Morris had shown up at the house on Thanksgiving, she could see that, as annoying as they were to each other, Michael liked him. And knowing her husband and his natural charisma, the feeling was probably mutual. 

“He offered it,” Michael said finally. “Right at the beginning, when all I wanted was to be done. I wanted to just… go back and change my mind, you know?” She cocked an eyebrow at the idea that he’d  _ ever _ rather be dead, and he snorted. “I mean, yeah, at first it was fun. Like a game—I was going to be  _ me _ , but better.” He twined their fingers together. “But when I realized I was never going to see you or Heather again… Never get to grow old with you, watch Heather actually survive her teenage years...” He tightened his grip and fell silent.

“Oh, Michael,” she whispered, bringing her free hand up to cover both of theirs. Because she was  _ her _ , and she knew beyond a doubt—beyond the grave, apparently—how much he loved her and Heather. “But you said no?”

He smiled the same smile he’d had when she said “I do,” the same smile he’d had when she showed him the pregnancy test, the first ultrasound. The same smile…

“I couldn’t forget you, Lisee,” he said, leaning toward her, tears in his eyes. “God, never.”

And then he kissed her, long and slow and passionate, like he’d done their whole life together. She’d known it was him, somehow. She’d always known. And this? This was just the ultimate proof.

“If you two are going to make out, can you get a room?” Heather asked sleepily from the backseat. “There’s a child present, you know?”

“Go to sleep, Heather,” Lisa said, out of habit.

Husband and wife sputtered out laughter like teenagers and Michael looked back at their daughter. “Sorry, honey,” he told her, backing slowly out onto the road. “No hotel tonight. We need to keep moving.”

And so they did. The family Lisa had been sure she’d never have again.

Whatever happened from here on out, at least they’d face it together.

*******   
the end


End file.
